Re: [CSS3] CSS Text Level 3, 6.1: text-align: string

On Dec 31, 2008, at 4:41 PM, L. David Baron wrote:

>> OK, thanks; I wasn't aware of that. Given that, could this say  
>> "String
>> values for text-alignment do not apply to anything other than table
>> cells" (removing the part about it being treated as 'start')? That  
>> way,
>> the non-table-cell would still be free to inherit its text- 
>> alignment from
>> its nearest ancestor with a valid value, instead of being forced to  
>> be
>> "left". Isn't that the way things normally work if I give some  
>> invalid
>> value, such as <div style="text-align:not-valid;"> ? It seems like  
>> this
>> would be simpler than having a special built-in 'start' value.
>
> This doesn't work.  'text-align: not-valid' can be ignored long
> before we know whether something is a table cell.  But a value that
> works some of the time needs to be cascaded through.
>
> If fallback for this case is important, it should be in the value of
> the property (e.g., 'text-align: "." right').  That said, I'm not
> convince that it's important.

Wow. OK. I didn't realize it would be that hard to get a reasonable  
fallback value. In the case of decimal numbers, I would want the  
columns to be aligned on the decimal. That has got to be the most  
common use case, no? Especially if you don't know how many decimal  
places will be in each number. But if the same column happened to  
contain integers instead of decimals, then I would want them to line  
up on the right. Always (assuming they are values to be compared with  
one another).

Received on Thursday, 1 January 2009 00:58:43 UTC